Weirwood paste

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Weirwood paste is a paste made of weirwood seeds (and perhaps weirwood sap and perhaps other ingredients or even blood). It is made by the children of the forest.

It is given to Bran Stark to eat when the Last Greenseer decides it is time for the next step - for Bran to go beyond skinchanging and learn what it means to be a greenseer. Bran’s blood makes him a greenseer but it is the the weirwood paste that will help awaken his gifts and wed him to the trees. Leaf tells Bran that the trees will teach him.

The next step

Leaf takes a weirwood bowl from Snowylocks’s hands. The bowl is carved with a dozen faces, like the ones the heart trees wear. She hands it to Bran along with a wooden spoon. Something about the look of the paste makes Bran feel ill, it has red veins that he supposes are only weirwood sap, but in the torchlight they look remarkably like blood.


Bran’s reaction to the weirwood paste taste is similar to that of Daenerys Targaryen upon drinking shade of the evening before entering the House of the Undying, the first taste is not good, and the last is delicious. To Bran it tastes bitter, then better, the almost sweet. It tastes of honey, of new-fallen snow, of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him. When he is finished Leaf touches his hand and tells him that the trees will teach him, the trees remember.


The singers move about the cavern, extinguishing torches one by one and the darkness thickens and creeps towards him. The three-eyed crow tells Bran to close his eyes and slip his skin, as he does when he goes to join Summer. But this time go into the roots instead. Follow them up through the earth, to the trees upon the hill ...

References and Notes